So I bought an Android phone today...

[Manntis]

Windows 7 recognizes more - XP would cap out at low RAM.

I recently got a Samsing Galaxy Vibrant. Adroid Phones FTW. My froends mostly have iPhones and brag about them... then this morning 3 of them were late for work because iPhone alarm settings failed yesterday and today, a problem that happened back in November but Apple didn't patch.

Also, they show off apps they bought, but get upset when I go into the Android market and find similar apps - often the same one but for a different platform - offered free of charge for Android phones.

iPhones look nice, but I gave up on Apple a long time ago. Not only are thier products as flawed as anyone elses, but they hide behind "It just works. Except when it doesn't, which means you did something wrong. Don't like it? Um... you're... just too poor to buy our elite trend setting stuff. Yeah, that's it."

[Iconic Ride]

It's mos def 64 bit, Bibs, and has the Intel i5 processor with [so called] "turbo boost" which increases chip speed when called for. It's still "'only" dual core, not quad like the i7, but plenty fast for my purposes. Also has a 512 mb dedicated ATI graphics card, so no complaints on that end.

Minor issue: apparently Flash Player's newest version is still in beta mode with regard to 64 bit architecture. At least that's what a popup message implied.

[rogerch]

Speakin' of Bluetooth, today I decided to pair up my phone and the hands free facility in my car stereo. I've paired headsets to phones, phones to PCs and to laptops, but this should go in "What made you happy today" what a doddle, first time 4 digit code all done, fixed, working, fineto ! Now if I get in the car, phone on, don't even need to take it out of my pocket, the stereo picks it up, it operates on voice command. I love it when a plan comes together.

[oneshot]

John

You are right that the flash player is beta for 64 bit, however, I have been running it now for months without problems so you should be OK.

[Manntis]

Me too. Win 7 64 bit runs flash just fine.

[Iconic Ride]

Thanks, guys.

Roger, I won't be impressed until you configure your hands free bluetooth setup to send your "backup camera" views directly to your brain.

[wookiecj]

Blimey, John.... rocket science to neurosurgery in one small step... too much, maybe, even for our favourite wingless Antipodean. I'll be keeping a close eye on this thread as Roger will no doubt wish to engage in the challenge as issued by one of Uncle Sam's forum representatives. Let battle commence!

[Iconic Ride]

Sounds good to me, Chris. This thread had gone dormant for a while anyway, so why not engage in a bit of old fashion hijacking to liven things up.

[rogerch]

There you go, reversing at sunset.

[wookiecj]

I know some people like to think of baldness as the exposure of the solar panel for a sex-god, but a fusion cranium is taking things to an unbelievably high level, or is that what the average Aussies brain does when beaten at cricket... AT HOME!

[rogerch]

Rule Britannia, I'm British. Just holidaying in the sun

[Iconic Ride]

Right............A sterling job of threadjacking, mates. Accolades all 'round.

Regarding the original topic, I'm proud to announce that I have "imported" all 235 pictures from my phone to the new laptop, via the [phone's] supplied USB connector/charger cord. There was a little nuance involved, having to do with selecting the "mass storage" button on the phone's USB [deeply buried] menu, that I learned about while perusing the Samsung site FAQ's area. The menu's default setting, interestingly, does not allow the drivers to install upon plug in. Once enabled, the transfer took well under a minute. And these were all 5 MP pics. Impressive, to me at least. The process is straightforward enough that my urge to procure the bluetooth adapter has substantially diminished, but has not been completely ruled out. There are other possible uses for the adapter that might come into play in the future.

Additionally (and earlier), I was able to connect the phone and laptop via WiFi using an Intel program that came with the computer, but could not transfer any data between the two. The Intel app says the computer should become a wireless "access point" under these conditions, but it certainly didn't act like one. More sleuthing will be necessary, me thinks.

[rogerch]

So, can I then download apts to the phone from my home wifi and not use the web facility within the phone ?

And then can I use skype on the handset again via my wifi ? oh and access email ?

[oneshot]

My Android phone automatically turns off the 3G data when it is connected to wifi and will always use wifi if possible. I installed most of my apps, surf the web etc using wifi (we have wifi at work as well).

You android people may be interested in a little app called juicedefender - it prolongs battery life (currently I am gettiong it extended by 184%. It is quite clever and works by selectively shutting down things you aren't using (like GPS, wifi) and then enabling them when needed.

[Bibs]

Good shout! I'll get that...

Very much enjoying Swype at present

[rogerch]

Gee you got well manicured fingernails there Bibs.

[Iconic Ride]

Dave, my phone's wifi (when I have it turned on) also always defaults to my home network's router, rather than burning up data usage from the provider's cell towers. What I'm trying to do (and I think Roger, also) is use its wifi capabilities to "pair" directly with with a wifi enabled (as most are these days) computer. I'm simply trying to see if I can bypass the use of a physical connection, more for the "sport of it" than anything else. The USB cord isn't all that much of a hassle, but I still miss the convenience of bluetooth transfers using the "old" laptop. I'm hoping that I can find some equivalent way of selecting a release of "mass storage" for wifi connectivity, in much the same manner as it worked for the physical USB link mentioned in my prior post.

Bibs, I've been using Swype since I first got my Captivate, and I can assure you that, while it's significantly faster than "thumbing," and relatively forgiving, there is still a learning curve involved, and I don't expect to be as proficient as the guy in the video in this lifetime. It's still a pretty cool app nonetheless, and the "predictive words" feature is one of its best attributes, and if it's anything like my old Motorola was, it also "learns" with usage over time. The biggest problem, I find, is dealing with the line of sight "blockage" of portions of the keyboard as you seek the next letter in line. I'm used to resting my hands on a keyboard's "home keys," and don't yet have a feel for where the letters/symbols are in a bird's eye view general sense. Remember way back when someone tried to change the QWERTY keyboard layout to a more ergonimically efficient design? Resistance was massive. Only a newborn child would have profited from that effort. All us dinosaurs represented too large a demographic to overcome.

Edited January 5, 2011 by Iconic Ride

[andydclements]

For the mobile telephone and PC to communicate directly without a WiFi base station I'm pretty sure you'd need to have both devices acting in ad-hoc mode, I'd guess the PC can handle that if you adjust the settings, no idea if the mobile will. You may find you can still "pair" the mobile and the PC but do so over your home wireless network, but the software needs to be told to use the home WiFi rather than the mobile data connection, how you do that (and whether it can be done) would probably depend on the software in question.

[Iconic Ride]

Andy, I assume that "ad hoc" is the equivalent of "peer to peer," as opposed to the usual home network's "infrastucture" setup. It's been a while since I set up my network, so I've gotten a bit fuzzy on the terminology and their respective definitions. As it happens, I was in Best Buy"s (do they have them in the UK?) computer department today, and mentioned to one of the staff that I had succeeded in "connecting" my phone and laptop via wifi. He said that was the first he'd heard of anyone managing to do that, and your observation that the phone's software isn't really set up to make use of such a connection, probably explains my inability to accomplish any useful actions by means of it. The same sales person seemed to think that same difficulty would arise if I tried to have a wifi enabled laptop print wirelessly directly to a wifi printer---which was one of the reasons I was in the store, trying to discover if this was feasible. He thought not, as most folks would want to use the infrastructure setup, so that anyone at home could use the printer via the router (as access point), just as they do when surfing the web. At this point I've reached the conclusion that trying to draw analogies between bluetooth and wifi is fruitless.

So............I came home with a bluetooth "micro adapter" ["dongle"]. It was just sitting there on the shelf, looking so excited about the prospect of being adopted by a good home, that you could almost hear it saying, "Take me!.....Take me!......" It's almost microscopically tiny, which is of course the intent, so that it can reside in its new USB home [port] indefinitely, as designed, masquerading as "semi--integrated."

But you also brought up an interesting point, a "work around" of sorts, with regard to my original desire to "pair" the phone with the computer. Since they both can obviously communicate with the network router, there is probably a way to "share" files between them via the network, rather than directly. In our household, everyone pretty much wants to keep their respective computers "private," so we've not experimented with any network sharing options between computers. Other familes may have their home networks set up to share music files, pictures, etc. I suppose. Different strokes for different folks.

And to complicate matters further, my new laptop has integrated WiMAX capability, no adaptor required. A pretty slick feature, but somewhat expensive to subscribe to, an additional cost justifiable only for business reasons.

[Iconic Ride]

OK, for all you "geek wanna be's" out there, I have finally succeeded in "pairing" my phone and new computer, using the recently purchased bluetooth adapter mentioned above. It was not as straightforward as I'd expected. Plugging the adapter into one of the laptops's USB ports automatically initiated the installation of Windows native "generic" drivers, just like any other "plug and play" device. I then installed the Rocketfish software (which, of course, had its own drivers, etc.) from the included CD, and the computer recognized that it was attempting to pair with a phone, even showing it as an available device. However, all attempts to send/receive data (in this case, a phone pic) kept asking for a pin or password. There was no provision that I could find for this entry on any screen of either phone or computer. Weird.

So, in desperation, I shut every thing down (phone and computer) and rebooted both. On the very next attempt to send a pic, prompts on both phone and computer appeared, asking for confirmation of a randomly self-generated 8 digit pin. The time limit to do this confirmation acknowledgement was quite short, and it took me a time or two to get it right (mostly because I was trying to record the pin for future reference, until I realized it changed randomly on each attempt), but when I did, voila, they connected. Yippee! says I. Subsequent connection requests were automatic, and "pin free."

And here's the cool part. When I made a call to my son upstairs, the computer rang, he answered through the laptop's speakers, and heard me through the laptop's microphone, all without me doing a thing. I even had him send me a text message to see if the "text to speech" feature of the phone would still work, and it did. Smokin', somebody stop me!

I next wanted to see if communications would work in the other direction, and sure enough the CD's installed software had prompts to allow me to "browse" the computer's music files to send them to the phone. Selected the phone's music player, and up pops my "download," ready to play. Nifty. And all done wirelessly, as God intended.

[rogerch]

[Iconic Ride]

sotto voce, in best Elvis Presley imitation.................."Thank ya'......thank ya' verra' much."

[Bibs]

I created an android TLF app. Took less than a minute and just looks like the website still, not sure what it's got above viewing the site in a browser but it's a start I guess!

http://appsgeyser.com/getwidget/The+Lotus+Forums

[andydclements]

I've finally decided to replace the G1 handset. I'm still not happy with only touch-screen so I've gone for the Desire Z. Now the fun of setting it up to much the same as the G1 was, same apps etc.

[Bibs]

Just bought one of these

It will replace my Dell Streak (I'm getting an HTC as a phone, the Streak is just too big!) and my netbook plus it's also a tablet, how cool is that

http://www.techradar...r-954145/review